AMD, Toshiba Rumored to be Teaming Up for Branded SSD

The rumor that AMD is working on a branded solid state drive shouldn't be all that surprising. After all, the company's line of memory was all just a rumor until AMD revealed its Radeon-branded memory modules back in 2011. Producing an SSD seems like the logical next step.

The latest AMD rumor is that the branded SSD will feature an OCZ controller -- possibly from the Barefoot series -- and Toshiba's own 19 nm NAND memory. Unnamed sources claim that AMD provided the specifications, and that the drive is specially tailored to fit AMD's needs.

AMD is expected to announce the SSD soon, including pricing and the specification for a 120 GB drive and a 240 GB drive. There's speculation that the company isn't trying to compete with Samsung and Intel in the SSD space, but to provide a more attractive, branded bundle. AMD may be focused on value rather than high capacity and high performance.

Toshiba purchased OCZ Technology Group and launched OCZ Storage Solution back in January. The acquisition provides Toshiba with OCZ's enterprise and client SSD businesses, allowing Toshiba to continue manufacturing SSDs using the established OCZ brand. In turn, OCZ Storage Solutions has access to Toshiba's NAND and combines it with the OCZ's proprietary controllers, firmware and software.

"We are very excited to be part of the Toshiba family where we will continue to develop new and unique solid-state storage technologies that position the new entity as a market leader," said Ralph Schmitt, CEO for OCZ Storage Solutions. "With Toshiba's financial strength and portfolio of leading-edge NAND flash memory, OCZ is now in an advantageous position."

For now, take all this branded SSD talk with a grain of salt. We reached out to AMD for more information, but the company will not comment on rumored products. Honestly, it wouldn't be surprising if the rumor was true. A Radeon SSD would make a great addition to any AMD-based bundle.

While we cannot say this for sure both OCZ and Toshiba have not been having the best streak of luck recently with reliability. I have had OCZ SSDs just stop detecting in systems (a lot of them) and the newer Toshiba 7mm HDDs were dying faster than any others out there.

I hope AMD does not get that kind of quality as it will tarnish the brand more than anything.

I also don't see AMD dropping prices. OCZ was already a cheaper alternative to Samsung and Intel but as well they were considered lower end. You pay for that reliability and superior NAND quality with Intel/Samsung/Corsair/Plextor. SSD prices will drop as they become more common, larger sizes and higher density NAND from smaller process sizes become more widely available.

Slap "AMD" onto a Crucial M4 or M550 and I'd be feeling a lot more easy about this... please, please don't let Toshiba sell a shoddy product with AMD's name tacked to it. That's the last thing they need right now. Maybe they'll have no problems at all, but I'm not putting any money on Toshiba (or OCZ for that matter) reliability.

if the rumor turns to be true, I think it will be interesting to see how AMDs design will improve on performance for AMD systems and how it performs in AMDs own APU applications as opposed to other SSDs. only real downside to this rumor is that its Toshiba which I have not had any fun dealing with in the past.

That said, I dont think this would help AMD in their economic situation. Sure they are gaining market share and finally turning a profit, but this would most likely just end up like most other AMD venues where they either break even every year or lose money. however its good to see them expand their market, AMD is slowly but steadily getting everywhere.

They have newer MLC Z-Drive 4500, PCI-Express slot, 3.2TB $6,533, 1.6TB $3,806 and 800GB $2,355. The drives offers endurance of 2.5PB, and random read times of 252,000 IOPS (I/O per second) and random write times of up to 76,000 IOPS.

They come with bundled SW,Windows Accelerator and OCZ’s VXL virtualization

They have newer MLC Z-Drive 4500, PCI-Express slot, 3.2TB $6,533, 1.6TB $3,806 and 800GB $2,355. The drives offers endurance of 2.5PB, and random read times of 252,000 IOPS (I/O per second) and random write times of up to 76,000 IOPS.

They come with bundled SW,Windows Accelerator and OCZ’s VXL virtualization

If you had bothered to read you would know which SSDs are not covered:

"OCZ Storage Solutions is unable to provide any warranty support for the following legacy and end of life “OCZ Technology” products that were discontinued over the past year or prior: solid state drives from the following families, Core, Apex, Solid, Solid 2, Solid 3, Colossus, IBIS, Enyo, Nocti, Synapse, Octane S2, Octane S3, Onyx, Petrol, and RevoDrive Hybrid"

I agree, take it with a grain of salt, and play it by ear... maybe, just maybe, there would be a nice alternative down the line... 'He don't make sense, she don't make sense... but together they made sense...'

I ended up getting the AMD Radeon branded RAM for my intel based system due to the extra 2gig the AMD RAM Drive software offered. The RAM is completely rock solid. If AMD does some kind of bonus incentive and reliability in the same way for their SSDs, I could see this being a success.

Riddle me this; why do you see so many Macbooks go back for repairs? Simple, because of their Toshiba hard drives! Who makes the cheapest hard drives? Toshiba. Who makes the cheaper chipset? AMD.

Looks like I WON'T be getting my hands on these!

Actually, the reason why so many Macbooks go back for repairs is the users themselves. Have you seen how most Apple users treat their products? When they're being told they're "perfect" and nothing can go wrong with them, most users treat them like crap. Try dropping any laptop with a running hard drive over and over and see how long the hard drive lasts, regardless of brand. Not saying that Toshiba hard drives may not be of lower quality, but that it's the user base itself in that case.